The Best of Friends by Alex Day (accelerated reader books .txt) 📕

it was nothing, just a stupid fling, a moment of madness. That old chestnut.’ I feel tears pricking behind my eyelids and I squeeze them back. No matter how much I steel myself, how much iron I try to gird my heart with, it gets to me every time I think about it, corrosive jealousy gnawing at my stomach. ‘And I can tell that he’s still expecting me to invite him back home sooner rather than later,’ I conclude, giving an ironic snort of disbelief.

It seems like an age passes before you answer. When you do there’s something odd about your face, as if you don’t feel too good.

‘Look, Charlotte,’ you say, a hint of irritation in your tone. ‘You’re going to need to think really hard about Dan and your next move. I mean, if you did take him back, could you ever trust him again? Hasn’t he pushed you over the edge once too often now?’

I’m barely listening, but you plough on.

‘I’m not sure,’ you persist, ‘that if it were me, I could see my way back from this latest dalliance.’ There’s scorn in your voice, but whether for Dan or for me in my weakness I’m not sure. I’m concentrating too hard on something else to take much notice.

‘I haven’t decided yet,’ I reply tersely. The decision is for me, and me alone, to make.

You sigh and grimace sympathetically and say you need to be off. A dental appointment for one of the boys or something. In the hall, you put on your trademark red coat, liberally distributing bits of dried up and crumpled greenery from the pockets all over my pristine floor tiles.

‘Don’t worry,’ I say tightly, ‘I’m always finding weird things in my pockets.’

Once you’ve left, I give in to the rage that I’ve been harbouring since I realised. Since I understood why the necklace I found under the bed was familiar, where I’d seen it before.

On you. Around your neck. Matching the earrings that caught my eye in the picture Miriam took of you and Dan outside the tennis club, and which you are wearing today.

‘Fucking bastard!’ The words explode out of me and ricochet around the echoing hallway like lethal bullets. I’ve always been a measured person, not prone to violent outbursts of any kind. Fury like this I have never known before.

My rage rises up to almost uncontrollable levels. I pace up and down the length of the drawing room, metaphorically gnashing my teeth and tearing at my hair. The house is too big, too ornate and elaborate, for a single woman, even one with four children sporadically inhabiting it. I don’t want to be alone. I had a shit childhood and I deserve a better adulthood. I have never been unfaithful, and I never would be.

After the shock comes the realisation, like the clearing of the sky after the rain. I want Dan. I want my husband, here with me, where he should be, being mine.

If there had ever been any doubt as to whether I would give Dan up for someone else to have, it’s gone now. The fact that it’s you who wants him makes that all the more certain. How dare you come here with your sob stories about rejection and suicide? Are you for real? Perhaps the idea behind telling me is so that I’ll follow your lead, top myself, and leave the way clear for you, the scarlet harlot of Biglow village.

There is no way that is going to happen, no way you will ever get your dirty thieving hands on Dan. So much for you being a shrinking violet. How could I have been so deceived?

I’ll make you suffer for your betrayal, be in no doubt about it. No doubt at all.

Chapter 33

Charlotte

I’ve called Dan.

He’s been phoning and texting twenty times a day and I’ve refused to respond to anything. But today I give in. It’s actually me who picks up the phone to him. I tell him we need to talk and the relief in his voice is overwhelming. I have to make the arrangements quickly and then ring off because I can feel tears welling in my eyes and I don’t want him to know. I’m sure there’ll be a time for more weeping but it’s not now. Not yet.

He’s coming for dinner on Saturday night. I want it to be at the weekend so that there’ll be less chance of anything getting in the way like a conference call at 10pm or 6am, the usual ridiculous times that are Dan’s normal working hours. Plus, I’m nervous and I need a couple of days to prepare. To work out what to say, how much to concede. It’s not that I want to prolong anyone’s suffering, but if we’re going to make this marriage work, we both need to commit to it. And I’m not sure that Dan’s quite there yet.

I tell you that he’s coming round. I want to know what you’ll do. You continue to act like the innocent, as expected, to portray yourself as someone who’s only concern is for me and my welfare. Lying bitch. It’s good, in a way, to know. Because finally some of my desolation can be replaced by pure anger.

‘Is it what you really want, Charlotte?’ you ask down the phone line, all faux sincerity and sickly simpering.

‘I think so,’ I reply hesitantly, playing along. ‘I’m not sure at all but if I don’t see him, if we don’t talk, I’ll never know how I truly feel, will I?’

There’s a long silence during which I silently wish the rivers of hell to descend upon you.

‘I can’t say I’d be welcoming him back with open arms if it were me,’ you say, your voice tart now like a sour sweet.

For a split second, I am incandescent. ‘It’s hardly “open arms”,’ I retort, biting back a much stronger response. ‘It’s a conversation. That’s all.’

‘What about food?’ you ask, apropos of nothing, completely knocking me off kilter.

‘Food?’